NU men's basketball can't keep up with No. 3 Bellarmine in 85-70 loss

Northwood’s men’s basketball team played pretty well in spurts on Saturday night. But against a team like Bellarmine, pretty well wasn’t nearly good enough.

The third-ranked Knights put on an offensive clinic — cutting, screening, and sharing the ball beautifully — and overcame a scrappy effort by the Timberwolves to beat NU 85-70 in the final game of the GLIAC/GLVC Challenge at Riepma Arena.

Northwood coach Jeff Rekeweg wasn’t entirely displeased with his team’s defense, noting that Bellarmine is a very good opponent.

“I thought we actually had some pretty good (defensive) contests (on a lot of their shots), and they made them anyway. ... I thought we actually did a pretty good job of guarding them for as good as they are,” Rekeweg said. “ ... I give them a lot of credit for how good they are with the ball and the way they attack.”

The Knights (1-1) shot a tidy 56 percent (25 of 45) from the floor overall, including 41 percent (7 of 17) from 3-point range, but NU stayed in it from beyond the arc. The Timberwolves shot 50 percent (14 of 28) from long range and 46 percent (21 of 46) overall.

The big difference, though, was Bellarmine’s numerous layups and dunks off of cuts, as well as the Knights’ capitalizing on NU’s turnovers.

Bellarmine finished with a 30-8 advantage in points in the paint, while scoring 27 points off of 20 Timberwolves’ turnovers. By contrast, Northwood managed only nine points off of seven turnovers by the Knights.

“The turnovers hurt us,” admitted Rekeweg, whose team also struggled to take care of the ball a day earlier in a season-opening loss to St. Joseph’s. “ ... You can’t give them 27 points (off of turnovers), which we did. ... Some of the turnovers we had were just silly. ... Some were just fundamental (mistakes). It’s not because of lack of desire. It’s just that we’ve got to learn to play better and trust our teammates and not force the issue.”

Bellarmine led almost wire-to-wire, building a lead to as much as 18 in the first half before the Timberwolves cut it to 10 by the intermission. Northwood pulled to within five in the second half but could never get over that hump, as the Knights simply executed much better in crunch time and then pulled away at the foul line in the closing minutes.

Nick Spitzley scored eight of his team-high 19 points in the first few minutes to keep NU close. But with the score tied at 12-12, the Knights ran off seven straight points to spark a 16-4 run, making it 28-16. Spitzley drained his third 3-pointer of the game and Kyle Lamotte added a triple of his own to help the Timberwolves get the deficit into single digits, 30-22, but Bellarmine came right back with a 14-4 spurt to extend to its biggest lead of the half at 44-26.

Northwood showed some life in the closing minutes of the half, though. A pair of 3’s by Jure Prus stopped Bellarmine’s run, and then little-used senior guard Kyle Godfrey came off the bench to provide some heroics. Godfrey, who had never scored a point in two-plus years at NU, entered the game late in the half due to foul trouble for the Timberwolves’ starters, and he made an immediate impact.

First, Godfrey drilled a 3-pointer. Then, he was fouled while attempting another 3 and sank all three free throws. To cap it off, he then swished a buzzer-beater from well beyond halfcourt, giving him nine points in the final 1:04 of the half and cutting Bellarmine’s lead to 51-41 at the break.

Spitzley picked up where he left off as the second half commenced, canning another triple to cut it to 51-44, but the Knights stole the momentum back with a pull-up jumper by Al Davis and a cutting layup by Rusty Troutman to make it a double-digit lead, 55-44.

Slowly but surely, the Timberwolves chipped away at the deficit, eventually slicing it to 65-60 on another 3-pointer by Godfrey. After Bellarmine extended to a nine-point lead, Spitzley hit yet another triple to cut it to 72-66 with 4:14 to play. And after a solid defensive possession by the Timberwolves, the Knights were forced to inbound the ball under their own basket with only one second left on the shot clock.

Instead of getting a much-needed stop, though, Northwood ended up giving up a crucial bucket. Bellarmine’s Adam Eberhard flashed into the lane off of a screen and laid it in off of a nice inbounds pass from Troutman just before the shot clock expired — and that play seemed to sap any hope that the Timberwolves still had.

“We knew what they were going to run. ... We just didn’t (execute defensively),” Rekeweg said of the play. “ ... That was a huge play. We had a great defensive possession, and then they were able to get that (bucket).”

Northwood then turned it over on its next two possessions, and Jarek Cole hit a 3-pointer for Bellarmine to extend to a 77-66 lead with 2:26 to play. The Knights then hit 6 of 6 free throws down the stretch to seal it.

“There’s no question that the guys are working hard. I don’t question the effort,” Rekeweg said of his team. “It’s the execution (that’s hurting us). And for a lot of the first half, our leaders were on the bench with foul trouble, and that didn’t help, either.”

Eberhard scored a game-high 22 points to lead Bellarmine, while Troutman had 15 points and four assists, Alex Cook scored 14 points, Davis had 10 points and six assists, and Tyler Jenkins finished with nine points and four assists.

For NU, Godfrey finished with 16 points in only 15 minutes, while Matt Crowl had 14 points and eight rebounds, and Prus added eight points, four assists, and four turnovers.

Bellarmine had a big advantage at the foul line, making 28 of 32 free throws (88 percent) to Northwood’s 14 of 18 (78 percent).

The Timberwolves (0-2) will head to Wisconsin-Parkside for a 7 p.m. game on Thursday before returning home to face Cedarville next Saturday at 3 p.m.

According to Rekeweg, his players need to toughen each other up in practice, particularly when it comes to handling pressure.

“I just told our guys, ‘If you’re the eighth, ninth, 10th man (in the rotation), you have got to make your teammates better (by practicing hard). You can’t take plays off. You’ve got to push each other and challenge each other in practice,’” he noted. “Right now, it’s tough for us to simulate any other teams in practice, because we don’t have a lot of depth, so we have to get better at that.”